Lena Dunham’s Girls pitch sums up a generation

The writer describes it as 'the worst pitch you’ve ever read'

Looking back on when she walked into the HBO office to pitch the idea for Girls at 23 years-old, Lena Dunham reflect on her less-than-stellar pitch for the show that inspired a generation.

Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, the writer and star of the hit show tells of her nonsensical “tone poem about millennial life” and describes her spiel as “the worst pitch you’ve ever read".

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Spelling out exactly what makes her generation tick, including Facebook posts and blogging pictures of food, but with no actual details about anything that would happen throughout the course of the show.

She described the premise of the show (which is about to air it's sixth and final season) to the network, starting with; “Sex and the City depicted women who had mastered their careers and were now being driven crazy by the tick of their biological clocks.

Gossip Girl is about losing your virginity and gaining popularity, in a world where no one is old enough to worry about making a living. But between adolescence and adulthood is an uncomfortable middle-ground, when women are ejected from college and into a world with neither glamour nor structure. The resulting period of flux is heartbreaking and hilarious and way too human. It’s humbling and it’s sexy and it’s ripe for laughs.”

HBO obviously immediately saw something special in Dunham, as they commissioned Girls straight away and even let her have cast complete cast control starting with hiring her childhood friend Jemima Kirke as the drifter character of Jessa.

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It also might have helped that the the big-wigs at HBO had already seen and loved Dunham's short independent film Tiny Furniture, which surely helped them to trust in her vision.

You can read the final three telling paragraphs of Dunham's pitch below in full:

"They are the Facebook generation and ironically enough they are isolated by all the connectivity available to them (and prone to Facebook stalking and drunk-IMing and booty calls via Twitter and deciphering text messages like they’re ancient hieroglyphs and blogging pictures of all the food they eat).

They are navigating the transition out of college-level codependence on their girlfriends, but will still call to announce that they got their period or saw a man masturbating on the subway or saw a man who looks sort of like a kid they went to camp with (could it be him? And if so, is he on Facebook?)

They’re beautiful and maddening. They’re self-aware and self obsessed. They’re your girlfriends and daughters and sisters and employees. They’re my friends and I’ve never seen them on TV."

Girls final season six will air on NOW TV and Sky Atlantic on the 13th February.

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